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Ahram Online
Prosecutors from the US state of New York seized five Egyptian artefacts worth more than $3 Million from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The decision is part of an investigation into international trafficking involving the Louvre Museum in France.
“The artefacts include a group of painted linen fragments depicting a scene from the Book of Exodus, which date back to 250 and 450 BC”, AFP quoted the Manhattan district attorney office.
The artefacts were confiscated on order by a New York state judge in May. The seized artefacts are part of an investigation related to Jean-Luc Martinez, former president of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Martinez was charged last week with complicity in fraud.
Martinez, who ran the museum between 2013 and 2021, has been charged with conspiring to hide the origin of the Egyptian archaeological artefacts. Investigators suspect that the Egyptian treasures were smuggled from Egypt during the revolution against late former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
“The Met Museum purchased the five seized pieces between 2013 and 2015”, reported The ArtNewspaper. The museum said it was “a victim of an international criminal organisation”.
“In 2019, the famous New York Museum returned a gilded sarcophagus of the priest Nedjemankh to Egypt, which was stolen during the 2011 protests”, according to NY prosecutors.
The Louvre case was opened in July 2018, two years after the Louvre’s branch in Abu Dhabi bought a rare pink granite stele depicting the pharaoh Tutankhamun and four other historic works.
